


Can't be unlearned, I've known the warmth of your doorways. Through the cold, I'll find my way back to you

by imadetheline



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark Will Graham, Emotional Hurt, Lots of Angst, M/M, Sad Will Graham, after twotl, hannibal's dead, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26538529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imadetheline/pseuds/imadetheline
Summary: Will drags them both to shore, shivering and weak. He breathes heavily against Hannibal's chest. The other man doesn't breathe back.or: Will deals with Hannibal's death after their fall.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Can't be unlearned, I've known the warmth of your doorways. Through the cold, I'll find my way back to you

**Author's Note:**

> title from it will come by hozier. 
> 
> this is just something really short i wrote. it's probably ooc but oh well. hope you like it. please leave a comment if you do. i crave validation.

He feels the absence before he opens his eyes… so he doesn’t open them. He lays in the silence, lets it wrap its arms around him, the only embrace he’s let himself feel for months. He knows what sight will assault him when he claws his way out of the cold: an empty bed in an empty room in an empty house… in an empty world, colder than the silence. He exhales through his nose, hears the breath melt into the void. And then he opens his eyes.

His room is dim, light trying to pry its way past the closed curtains. He pulls himself from the bed, hand grasping for his glasses as his eyes adjust. He shoves them onto his face once his fingers find them. The world isn’t clearer. He yanks them off his face and lets them clatter to the floor. 

His dogs are with Alana. He thinks. No, wait, she left. They’re not here, that’s all he knows. He stumbles towards the kitchen, half-way to the fridge before he remembers he’s been avoiding the kitchen. HIs hand stops and hangs suspended where it was reaching for the fridge door. He can’t lower it and he can’t reach farther. He’s stuck, stuck in stasis. 

The emptiness widens in his chest cavity, pushing his ribs apart as it expands. His heart pumps loudly in his ears. It’s all he can hear. Images of blood and stainless steel, small smiles and guns pointed at heads flash in front of his eyes. His gaze is drawn to an old pan, sitting motionless on the stove. He stares, eyes watering, as long as he can. He knows what he’ll see once he blinks: his bloody heart sizzling on the stovetop. He knows it will take everything from him. A tear runs down his cheek. He realizes he’s already lost everything. He blinks.

There’s food in the pan. It’s not his heart. His gaze snaps up and meets Hannibal’s eyes. They’re warm, amber… alive. He doesn’t stop the tears as they collect under his lashes and drip down his cheek. He’s losing parts of himself to the tiled floor as he hears one hit the ground. He hadn’t known there were parts of him still left. 

Hannibal’s wide smile drops and he leaves the food on the stove as he rushes to Will’s side, hands landing on Will’s cheek where he wipes away the tears. His face is still wet, but he doesn’t care. Hannibal’s warm and he’s there. Will lets himself lean into the warmth, his eyes fluttering closed. 

He can barely remember when his skin wasn’t cold to the touch, when the growing void hadn’t sucked the warmth from his limbs. He has never been able to produce his own warmth. He’s coldblooded, stealing heat from others instead of the sun, until there’s nothing left for them but death or leaving. Everyone does one or the other. Logically that must make them the same. Except Hannibal is the sun and he has an endless supply of warmth that Will wants nothing more than to absorb. Was… He was the sun. Will opens his eyes and Hannibal’s gone. He’d expected nothing less but it’s too much. It’s so much worse than he expected.

He feels something crack deep inside. He can’t hear his heartbeat anymore. Maybe it’s never been there. He feels the emptiness reaching down into his stomach, up his throat, choking him. He can’t breathe, hasn’t been able to since Hannibal… 

Even here while the sunlight streams through kitchen windows feet away he won’t think it. 

Since it… happened, it’s like he’s been holding his breath. No, not holding it. He just hasn’t felt the need to breathe. That urge was swallowed by the sea that broke its promise. The sea that filled his lungs only halfway and then condemned him for his crimes, to a life he’d tried to leave. 

Maybe he had succeeded. He pulls his hand up with effort. It shakes as he looks at the pale skin, broken by blue and purple veins. He’s seen worse corpses and he doesn’t feel alive. 

But wherever he is, Hannibal isn’t here.

His hand falls unceremoniously back to his side. He turns away from the fridge and allows himself to lean back against it, sliding down to the floor. He almost expects to look to the side and see Hannibal. He looks. He’s not there. He turns back, hoping for Hannibal’s kitchen. It’s his own.

He can’t even feel the tile beneath him or the metal behind him. He pulls at his shirt until he can see the gaping smile scarred across his stomach like a prayer, a holy utterance. Life is anything but holy now. How can it be, without its deity? 

Seeing Hannibal had only made it worse, widened the gap between his mind and his body. One day they’ll drift too far apart to come back together. Maybe they already have. He hopes so.

He stays there until they come looking, checking, to assuage their own consciences. He smiles at them, reassures them and they leave happier about themselves. They don’t notice his emptiness, even as it spills over, snatches at their warmth. It’ll be over soon anyway.

Some say the world will end in fire, flashes through his mind. He’d certainly thought so, once: Hannibal at his side. The world would have burned while they watched. 

For destruction ice is also great and would suffice. It would have to he concedes. The world had deprived him of Hannibal’s glorious flames to sate his leeching cold that still spills from his fingertips. Now they would suffer his all encompassing emptiness. Death would claim him one way or another. He stands and reaches for a kitchen knife.

**Author's Note:**

> If you guys liked it leave a comment. They make my day! if you guys have ideas for other one-shots send me an ask on tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/imadetheline) or just yell about stuff with me. I also have another tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/soithinkicanwrite) for all my writing stuff and one [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/madness-shared-by-two) for everything hannibal. Thanks for reading!


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